Taken by storm(75)

She’d killed his second-in-command.

He was going to kill her. She was Ali’s sister, and Shay was going to kill her. There was nothing I could do to stop him. She was a human. She’d killed a werewolf. She was a threat, and as far as Senate Law was concerned, Shay would be within his rights to put her down.

“Well, Bryn?” Shay smiled, and I realized he was still waiting for me to order my wolves to change to human form. I nodded to Lake and Chase. She Shifted back to human form. He did not. Instead, he came to sit at my feet, the warning clear in his eyes.

“Interesting,” Shay said again. “I didn’t know the Cedar Ridge alpha had taken a mate.”

That wasn’t a word Chase and I used—but the second Shay said it, I felt a spark of recognition from inside Chase’s wolf form.

Yes, it seemed to say. Mate. Bryn. Mine.

Shay didn’t leave us in silence for long. “Do you know the difference,” he said, relishing each word like a delicacy, “between a Rabid and an alpha who kills humans when the need arises?”

He didn’t give me a chance to answer.

“It’s a matter of subtlety. Restraint. Proper disposal of the bodies.” His teeth were so white that I wondered if he’d bleached them, but I couldn’t stop thinking of Callum telling me that the future was coated in blood. Now Shay was talking about disposing of Caroline’s body.

“Was it subtle when you killed the leader of a psychic coven?” I asked, my voice deceptively calm. I searched for leverage, a loophole, anything that might give me an advantage over Shay. “Was exposing yourself to an entire group of humans and leaving their hatred of werewolves to simmer for years subtle?”

This was the card I was holding in reserve. The only one. Shay hadn’t just killed Caroline’s father—he’d left a witness and allowed her to spread the tale to others of her kind for years. As far as blackmail material went, that might not be enough to save Caroline—but I had to try.

“What are you suggesting?” Shay asked.

I met his eyes, steel in mine. “I’m suggesting that you don’t want the Senate looking into Caroline’s death. They might wonder why she attacked you, and I don’t think you’d want them finding the answer.”

Shay was silent for one second, two. “You’re assuming there will be an inquiry.” He paused, his lips curling upward, his eyes narrowing to slits. “There won’t be.”

Shay was right. Caroline had fired the first shot. There wasn’t a Were on the Senate who would dispute Shay’s decision to kill her, so long as he didn’t risk exposure to do it.

She was only human.

“I’ll call the Senate myself,” I promised, letting Shay see the truth in my eyes, letting him smell it on my breath. “I’ll demand an inquiry. And once I present my case, once I tell them what I know—how sure are you that Callum will be on your side and not mine?”

I waited for Shay to call my bluff. If Callum had wanted to prevent this, he could have. I fully expected Shay to point that out, to tell me that the Senate was a democracy, and that—at the moment—Shay was playing by their rules.

But he didn’t.

“Is she yours?” Shay flicked his eyes toward Caroline, and I sensed a split second of hesitation on his part. “Is the human yours?”

Caroline wasn’t a member of my pack, but if I admitted that, Shay could and would kill her without repercussions. Since she’d attacked first, it wouldn’t even be a Senate matter, not the way Rabid kills were, and all that my calling the Senate would accomplish would be pissing the other alphas off.

But if Caroline were mine—if I claimed her as part of my pack, the way that Callum had once made me a member of his—then that would complicate the situation—for Shay and for me. If he killed her, I’d have the right to call his actions into question, and even if the Senate ultimately ruled that he’d done nothing wrong in killing her, I’d be in position to bring up the fact that Shay had murdered her father—and why.

Shay wouldn’t want the Senate asking questions, not about that.

But if I claimed Caroline as my own, that would mean that a member of my pack had just killed a member of Shay’s. He’d still have the right to take blood for the blood she’d spilled. If he demanded Caroline’s life and I refused to hand her over, he’d have the option of taking her transgression out on me.

Beside me, Caroline didn’t say anything. She didn’t move. She didn’t even look at me.

She didn’t have to.

We’d fought side by side these past few days. She was Ali’s family, and that made her mine.